The Montreal track was torn down with glee by the public at large. It became a symbol of Olympic waste and public project tax burdens. The club that ran the Velodrome was elitist and completely out of touch with the PR aspects of running the drome so as not to alienate the public. Public sessions were a total of 8 hours a week and ended at midnight on weekdays. Driving home to Vermont starting at midnight with the start of work at 7AM was not a pleasurable prospect. No weekend public sessions. They shooed me off bigtime when I tried to join the club to take advantage of the other 60 hours or so the club had scheduled. There were over a hundred track bikes stored in lockers at the drome. But heating a building that seated thousands (maybe 5,000 as a guess) for the use of a couple hundred people just couldn't be justified in a time when Quebec taxes were staggering.
Joe Bender-Zanoni
Great Notch, NJ
<wmcgehee1@juno.com>; <jimallen@nctimes.net> Cc: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 1:39 PM Subject: Re: [CR]Vigorelli spruce-up? Now Montreal 76 'drome
> The Montreal Velodrome space is now an "EcoCenter", showing various
> aspects of the environment. The roof is hung from cables off of one main
> arm. Beautiful building, shame about the rest.
> ciao,
> John T.Pergolizzi
> LaJolla Ca. for two more weeks
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Grant McLean" <Grant.McLean@SportingLife.ca>
> To: "'William McGehee'" <wmcgehee1@juno.com>; <jimallen@nctimes.net>
> Cc: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 1:02 PM
> Subject: RE: [CR]Vigorelli spruce-up? Now Montreal 76 'drome
>
>
> > Thanks Bill, great stuff.
> >
> > Anyone know what became of the track from inside the Montreal velodrome?
> > I thought it was some rare African wood, and I vaguely remember it was
> > dissassembled and sold in the early 80's, as debt piled up after the '76
> > olympics. The roof of the stadium is the shape of a classic leather
> > hair net if I recall, but I don't know what the space is used for now.
> >
> > Grant McLean
> > Toronto.Ca
> >
> >
> > Bill McGehee:
> > THE VIGORELLI "was an outdoor velodrome, it was semi-covered to lessen
> > the
> > effects of the wind. Its lightning surface was made of 2" by 2' slats
of
> > twenty foot long pine boards cut piece by piece from the centers of
> > trunks of trees grown in a particular stand of Russian pine deep in
> > Siberia.
> >
> > There, the pine grew slowly, making the wood more dense and practically
> > without knots or splinters. A racing surface of this kind of wood was
> > as firm and as smooth as could be created. Racers could use the
lightest
> > possible tires and, when Milan's air was still and dry in September, the
> > combination created ideal conditions for setting records."
> > Source: Winning March 1984
> > Bill,
> > F.B., Ga